'IT'S IMPORTANT, BEING ON REALITY TV, TO BE HONEST'

TV queen Billie Shepherd is fighting fit after being laid low by illness and has a new series with her sister coming out

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With three beautiful kids, a happy marriage and an exceptionally close bond with her sister, Billie Shepherd appears to live a charmed life. But behind the smiles, the ex-TOWIE star has been dealing with an illness that left her bedbound.

As Billie and her younger sister Samantha Faiers return to our screens in their new ITV reality show, Sam And Billie: Sister Act, Billie sits down with us to reveal how she’s slowly emerging from a battle with Lyme disease, a bacterial infection often caused by the bite of an infected tick. Symptoms include extreme fatigue and joint pain that can last years.

“It’s been a really, really tough time,” Billie admits. “I've been lucky in that I've never been challenged with health issues, I've never had to face that. And people are dealing with things 10 times worse, but it has been awful.”

Billie, 35, says she first noticed symptoms in January. “One day I was fine, the next I woke up with really bad pains in my elbows and my arms,” she explains. “I tried to ignore it but as the days went on, the pain went all over my body to the point where I couldn't even get out of bed.”

Billie says she went “back and forth to the doctors” and yet no one could work ‘out what was wrong. But the symptoms got worse. “I had hard, red lumps all over my legs, which were so painful, a horrible rash on my back and extreme fatigue,” she says. “But worst was the reactive arthritis — the most intense, awful pain in my joints. It was agony. My immune system was attacking the healthy tissue in my joints.

I had so many blood tests but no one could figure it out. One doctor said she'd never seen anything like it. It went on for about two months before we learnt it was Lyme's.”

Doctors believe Billie was bitten by an infected tick, possibly as long as three years ago. But the infection lay dormant until her immune system weakened, likely due to bouts of tonsillitis last year.